Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to augmented reading, and more particularly to distributing electronic content related to paper documents.
Description of the Related Art
The rapid shift to mobile Internet services is bringing content offerings to an increasingly larger number of connected devices. Experiences previously limited to a single device are now accessible across multiple devices as high volume consumer electronic platforms such as smart phones, tablets, eReaders, game systems, Internet TVs, and wearable devices have become new channels to receive digital documents and services. Popular electronic book services leverage standardized publishing formats to seamlessly integrate and synchronize digital document reading experiences across consumer devices. As digital documents are shifting from a static model to a connected one where related, personalized, and other social content are being aggregated dynamically within the original document, it becomes strategic for publishing platforms and their distribution systems to be able to decouple distribution of these new individual content layers and the original document, while properly authoring and managing these layers among a plurality of users.
But while providing excellent user reading experience for this new digital medium remains a focus of the commercially available eReading systems and applications, it has been so far much more difficult to integrate electronic content and services with physical paper documents. Because paper documents are inherently static, the dynamic user experience and enhanced security of digital documents are not available to users reading paper documents.